Several years ago, I was in Sacramento, California, for the inaugural California Craft Brewers Conference and accompanying festival. At some point, a group of us decided to break free of the convention center and head to a local brewery. There was a new brewery that had garnered some buzz and was within walking distance. It was lunchtime, and we figured we’d grab a bite along with some pints. As we started our walk over, someone checked the brewery’s website and saw the food truck of the day was serving only gelato.
It was pushing 90°F that day, and the frozen treat would have been delightful, but we wanted protein, a meal. So we rerouted to another brewery, this one with a taco truck.
In the beginning of the craft-beer renaissance in America, many of the breweries that opened followed the brewpub model. Local beer was a novelty, and owners needed something else—food—to get customers in the door and then hopefully drinking the beer.